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The Fountain
The Fountain is a 2006 film about three different men from the past, present, and future searching for their loves. Plot The Fountain has three storylines told nonlinearly, each separated by five centuries. The three periods are interwoven with match cuts and recurring visual motifs; Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the main characters for all three narratives. Even within a given narrative, the elements of that particular story are not told in chronological order. In 16th century Central America in Mayan territory, conquistador Tomas quests for the Tree of Life for his queen Isabel. In 2005, medical researcher Tommy obsessively seeks a cure for the brain tumor killing his wife Izzi Creo. In 2500, space traveler Tom travels to a nebula in a bubble-shaped spacecraft that contains a garden and a dying tree that represents his lost love. Director Darren Aronofsky emphasized that the storylines in their time periods and their respective convergences were open to interpretation. The director has said of The Fountain's intricacy and underlying message, "film is very much like a Rubik's cube, where you can solve it in several different ways, but ultimately there's only one solution at the end." Tomás the conquistador The film opens with conquistador Tomás in New Spain fighting a horde of Mayans to gain entry into a pyramid, where he is attacked by a Mayan priest with a flaming sword. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that the conquistador has been commissioned by Queen Isabel of Spain to travel to the New World in search of the Biblical Tree of Life. If Tomás can find it, she is convinced that she can put an end to the struggle between herself and a powerful cleric during the Spanish Inquisition who is attempting to control the throne and she vows she will wed Tomás upon his return. When he arrives at his destination, he finds that his fellow knights are exhausted and refuse to continue searching for the Tree of Life. Once he arrives at the pyramid, he is stabbed in the stomach, but the priest narrowly avoids killing him when he notices that Tomás is carrying a ceremonial dagger that fulfills a Mayan prophecy. The priest has a vision of the space traveler floating before him and asks Tomás to slit his throat. Tomás kills the Mayan and proceeds to a garden with a large tree; convinced this is the Tree of Life, Tomás applies some of its sap to his torso and is cured of his stab wound. He drinks heartily of the sap flowing from the bark. But in a reenactment of the Mayan creation myth told earlier in the film, flowers and grass burst forth from his body and he literally gives rise to new life. Tommy the neuroscientist Tommy is a doctor working on a cure for degenerative brain diseases in 2005. He is motivated by his wife Izzi's brain tumor, which has caused a rapid decline in her health. Izzi has used this time to assess the meaning of life and come to terms with her mortality, but Tommy refuses to accept that she might die and has increasing resolve to find a cure. She has written a book which apparently tells the story of Tomas the conquistador, but when she collapses at a museum, she becomes convinced that she won't live long enough to finish the book and asks Tommy to write the final chapter. She dies shortly thereafter and Tommy dedicates himself to curing not only her disease, but death itself. His colleagues fear that this drive has made him reckless, but they try to support him emotionally at Izzi's funeral. As a final act of love and devotion, Tommy plants a tree seed at Izzi's grave in the manner of a story she told him relating how a Mayan guide's dead father lived on in a tree nourished by the organic nutrients of the buried body. Tom the space traveler The narrative for Tom is set entirely in deep space in a small bubble. Jackman's character in this plot is alone flying in outer space toward a golden nebula of the nebula Xibalba with a large tree and a few personal effects inside his ship. While traveling, he meditates, performs tai chi, tattoos himself, and carries on a conversation with an apparition of Izzi from 2005. It is implied that she is somehow alive inside the tree, but it is dying and they need to reach Xibalba in order to bring it back to life. At the climax of the film, the tree dies and the star goes supernova, engulfing the traveler's ship. His body is incinerated, but the tree is brought back to life. Izzi's apparition picks a fruit from the new tree and hands it to Tommy the present day neuroscientist, who plants it in Izzi's grave. Cast *Hugh Jackman as Tomas/Tommy/Tom Creo *Rachel Weisz as Isabel/Izzi Creo *Ellen Burstyn as Dr. Lillian Guzetti *Mark Margolis as Father Avila *Stephen McHattie as Grand Inquisitor Silecio *Fernando Hernandez as Lord of Xibalba *Cliff Curtis as Captain Ariel *Sean Patrick Thomas as Antonio *Donna Murphy as Betty *Ethan Suplee as Manny *Richard McMillan as Henry *Lorne Brass as Dr. Alan Lipper *Anish Majumdar as Dr. Spencer Production The film was shot in parts of Canada and Pennsylvania. Gallery TheFountain.jpg Category:The Fountain